Hi Chipp,
> Just wondering, does MoI and SC share the same underlying kernel technology?
No, SpaceClaim uses the ACIS library and MoI currently uses the Solids++ library. In the future I will probably be doing some exploratory work to see if it's possible to switch MoI to use ACIS for some operations, but that's a ways off.
> I assume MoI and Rhino3D have the same kernel technology.
No, they use different kernels. MoI does use the OpenNURBS library which deals with reading and writing the contents of 3DM files, but that's the only part that's in common and it's specific just to file I/O. When MoI reads a 3DM file it translates the data into Solids++ data structures and then it's all Solids++ stuff that it deals with after that.
Rhino uses their own internally developed geometry kernel.
> Is it a NURBS type of kernel, or a solids kernel (or are they one and the same?).
They are usually part of the same kernel, usually in solids modeling kernels the way a solid is defined is by a set of surfaces (sometimes with some various possible types of surfaces including NURBS surfaces) that are joined together at common edges to define a watertight skin. There are usually a combination of NURBS functions and topology functions within the same library.
> I *assume* surface modelers, like Modo, Lightwave, SketchUp don't use a 3rd
> party kernel, but maybe they use some open source libraries?
Usually polygon mesh modeling programs use their own proprietary internally developed libraries for their geometry. Typically there isn't as much fancy analytic mathematical work involved in these and so it tends to be easier for it to all be developed internally rather than coming from some other library. There are some open source libraries for polygon mesh geometry as well but as far as I know none of those particular programs that you mention are based on one.
- Michael
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